Application networking specialist A10 Networks announced ACOS 4.0 with Harmony, an architecture that enables organizations to consolidate application networking and security on a unified platform and deploy on-demand services for applications in different cloud consumption models.
Using Harmony, developers can integrate intelligent application networking services more easily with the company’s Thunder Series Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs), A10 said. Enhancements include Secure Interconnect IPsec VPN, SSL Insight, Application Access Management (AAM) and Web Application Firewall (WAF).
Harmony also allows enterprises to integrate third-party services and prototype, test and provision new applications.
“As businesses seek to make the data center more agile to address changing business landscape and application needs, automation of infrastructures is becoming increasingly important while ensuring a cost effective solution,” Paul Nicholson, director of product marketing at A10 Networks, told eWEEK. “Harmony provides businesses with rich application delivery and security capabilities that can be automated via open standards- based programmatic interfaces driving down the total cost of ownership.”
Because of the ACOS 4.0 policy engine, A10 can accelerate development and create consistent API, CLI and Web management interfaces supported by advanced telemetry.
The company’s customers and partners will be able to take advantage of ACOS 4.0 and Harmony architecture to integrate their own networking, security, and management services.
With the ACOS platform, service providers can select virtualized network functions from their choice of vendors to derive efficiencies from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware.
“Business trends like big data, mobility, and cloud deployments are calling for a dynamic data center infrastructure that is secure, shared, flexible, and capable of rapidly adapting to changing application needs,” Nicholson said. “Moreover, evolving applications combined with the need for always-on reliability are requiring that IT organizations ensure a seamless infrastructure for application deployment and on-demand consumption.”
Integration with open, standards-based orchestration platforms and management tools help simplify network operations, while a unified platform allows resource and service allocation per tenant, helping to improve infrastructure utilization, the company said.
In addition, private and public cloud providers can ensure consistent security and application policy enforcement as workloads move across multi-tenant shared environments.
Integration with orchestration and software-defined networking (SDN) platforms allows service insertion and granular security according to tenant-defined or provider-defined policies. Agile configuration of dynamic security policies allows Secure Cloud Interconnect between different cloud domains, according to A10..
“IT organizations must be able to rapidly integrate application and security services to meet the business objectives with agility,” Nicholson said. “As the applications needs for agility and optimized cost continue to become more acute, application networking services will have to deliver completely automated services with programmatic interfaces that can be managed via dynamic policies. The onus now is on application delivery controllers to deliver consistent application and security services in an elastic and cost-effective environment.”